From a press release:
Today, the Social Security Administration announced a large step in a multi-year effort to simplify processes for people who are applying for Supplemental Security Income (SSI) by starting to offer an online, streamlined application for some applicants starting in December. SSI provides monthly payments to people with disabilities and older adults who have little or no income and resources.
The initial step – known as iClaim expansion – aims to establish a fully online, simplified iClaim application that leverages user-tested, plain-language questions, prepopulated answers where possible, seamless step-by-step transitions, and more. The online application aims to reduce the time spent applying as well as the processing time for initial claim decisions. ...
The rollout of the iClaim expansion will generally be available to first-time applicants between 18 and almost 65 who never married and are concurrently applying for Social Security benefits and SSI. A goal of the second phase – currently targeted for late 2025 – is to expand this to all applicants. ...
This rollout is quite limited -- concurrent claims for people who have never married. Why is it limited in those ways other than to hold down the number of claims filed in this manner? It's like they want to say they're doing it even though they're only barely doing it.
9 comments:
Let the nightmare begin. They are rolling out the online version In December when at at least a quarter of the staff is on vacation. I suggest to all SSA employees to enjoy their holidays since the New Year will bring additional IClaim workload. Happy Holidays!
The limited rollout is because marriage complicates an SSI claim quite a bit.
Every new rollout in T2 ( which I primarily did) was limited. The first claims on computers back in the late 80s were retirement only. No spouse or widows claims. They were added fairly soon thereafter.
Many T2 claims filed online need extensive work to process due to user errors and misunderstandings. SSI will likely be much worse.
Interesting - beneficiaries have been able to file limited ISSI claims since 2017. I wonder what changes they are making in the applications . It seems like the requirements are the same . https://secure.ssa.gov/apps10/reference.nsf/links/09152020073504AM
Every rollout has many bugs. A slow rollout gives the agency time to correct the bugs so the whole system doesn't collapse.
So, yes it is tiny step forward. And then a few back probably.But that is the nature of SSA. If they don't at least start somewhere, they will never do it.
The representatives will have claimants scheduled for office interviews for SSI IClaim in the December rollout date. The question is will Social Security be ready?
SSI and marriage so complicates things that it simply makes sense to start with a small segment, fix teh bugs that come up and then expand to more situations. Not quite a beta test but a limited application production run to test things without risking a lot. Makes perfect sense.
The only expansion is non-citizens. The remaining exclusion criteria is the same as current.
Marriage gets complicated with Deeming (or worse, the spouse already gets SSI). Makes sense to exclude it. Too many if/thens for the public to navigate.
The reason married SSI applicants are excluded is because any spouse creates potential problems. If the spouse is not on SSI it creates some complication due to their wages, resources, etc impact on the new applicant’s eligibility. If the spouse of the applicant is on SSI, it’s a nightmare. This creates a “start date” scenario in which you have to manually terminate the existing SSI spouse’s record and merge it with the new applicant’s. It’s highly error prone, complex, takes multiple days, and requires multiple inputs, a vestige of decades old system limitations. And frequently SSA finds out belatedly that one SSI recipient was connected to a spouse so we have to recalculate the existing recipients record, create manual overpayments, along with the notices, while subsequently dealing with the forthcoming waivers and appeals. What a country, heh?
Post a Comment